Disney’s North American Tour of Beauty and the Beast is coming to Nashville in early November. Holly Ann Butler, who is playing the role of Madame, took the time to speak with us about her role, the show, and what it’s like to be on a Broadway tour. 

Grace Krenz

Could you tell me about your role in Beauty and the Beast? 

Holly Ann Butler

Yes: Madame. I’m a big chest of drawers. Her official name now is Madame de L’amour, which is a little different than versions that they’ve done in the past, if you’ve ever seen a stage production of Beauty and the Beast before. She’s usually called Madame de la Grande Bouche, which means Madame Big Mouth. They rewrote some stuff for this version of the show. All of her scenes are totally different, which is really exciting. So you get a little bit of a different twist on the character this time around. 

GK

What’s different about her character?

HB

In the original production, Madame de la Grand Bouche was an opera singer and she was a little more focused on things like her clothes and her stuff, and that was her whole character thing, centralized around her being a former opera singer. Now she’s transformed into the castle matchmaker. So what’s cool about that is that it refocuses on the central storyline, right? She loves love and she has these feelings about people that are supposed to be together, and she has one about Belle and the Beast very early on in the show. So it kind of adds to the whole, central love story of the piece and everything, which I love so much. 

GK

What is your costume like? 

HB

I look a little bit like Marie Antoinette. I have a wig that’s about a foot tall on my head. It’s a big white wig. I have this really ornate, beautiful bodice with these long, flowy sleeves. And then from my waist to my knees, I have on a box. It’s made of foam, which is lovely, so it’s not super heavy on my actual body. But it gives me the appearance of being a chest of drawers, which we love. 

GK

How easy is it to move around and act with all that? 

HB

It’s actually shockingly easy. I think the hardest part’s my wig; it’s heavy because it is so tall, but beyond that, they’ve made it really user friendly. I can sit down, I can walk around, I can dance around. I can still walk up and downstairs, I just have to go slowly because I can’t really see my feet. But it’s actually super user friendly. They did a really good job. Our costume designers, on this particular production, did a really good job of trying to make them more accessible for us to be able to do things, you know, backstage as well as on stage. So it does make our life quite a bit easier. 

GK

You said that your role is rather expanded and different. How does this production compare to the movies? 

HB

The central premises are all the same. They’ve just taken a few things here and there. So we had the great benefit when we were doing the show, when we were in rehearsals in New York. Linda Woolverton, who wrote the animated feature as well as the Broadway production, was in rehearsals with us, and she updated the script in some ways. So there are some things that are small differences, updated and more accessible for today’s audience. Having chats with her about my character, specifically, one of the things that she had said was, while they loved the other version of Madame, they wanted to give her something that was more close to the central storyline. So she stops being sort of an outsider of the general premise of the play, you know? What’s cool now is that she ties into this very central romance storyline, even before everyone else is aware of it. She’s already on team Beast and Belle. 

GK

Are there any other elements in the show that you’d recommend the audience paying attention to in particular?

HB

I think that honestly, most of the things are things that you probably wouldn’t notice. Like they’ve added some scenes or changed some scenes for Gaston and LeFou. They’ve changed some of the dialogue in small ways that they thought added to the show in different ways or updated it. I have a reference in the script when I’m talking about previous couples that I had match made. I have various names I say, and one of the couples is Pierre and Pierre. So we have a little bit of contemporized things that are going on in the show, which is fun for people to see, like little tiny Easter eggs.

GK

Are all of the songs the same or are there changes? 

HB

The original Broadway production contained a song called “No Matter What” between Belle and her father, and that has been cut. Their scenes still exists, all of the information is still there, but that song is gone. We’ve added a ton of dance music for both “Gaston” and “Be Our Guest.” They’ve changed some of the dance arrangements for those things. “Be Our Guest” is now an eleven minute number, which is unbelievable. Our ensemble dancers are so incredible. I show up periodically in that number, but they are dancing their butts off for the entire time. It’s amazing. So things like that are not something that you would necessarily notice, but when you’re told you’re like, oh, yeah, “Be Our Guest” is a much bigger, more substantial number, the dance break of “Gaston” is longer. There’s little things like that. But otherwise, the songs are the same. I know the live action had some new songs that were written, we don’t include those. This is all still the original music from the original production. 

GK

You have done multiple famous Broadway shows before. What would you say is one of the differences between doing Broadway and Broadway on tour? 

HB

[laughs] You know, I’ve toured a lot actually, especially when I first moved to New York because, when you’re younger, it’s really easy to leave the city because frequently you don’t have a spouse or children or whatever. So it was just me and my dog on tour. But I think that it’s harder when you start to have a family and a life, it’s harder to be away from your home base that you created, especially if you’ve been living in New York for a while. But one of the things that I love so much about being on tour is seeing all the different cities. I am such a sucker for touristy things. I try to do at least one thing in every city we’re in that’s specific to that city. You get to try local restaurants and go to museums and do all that kind of stuff, which I love so much about traveling. Also having to pack your life up into essentially two suitcases is a challenge. But I feel like we all have our things that we need to survive, which is different for everyone. Some people really like to cook, so they travel with cooking gear, some people like board games. I have a sewing machine with me. Everybody has their ways to create a home on the road. 

GK

Do you travel by charter bus or are you flying? 

HB

We mostly fly. It depends on how close the cities are together. As per our union, there are rules about when they can bus us and when they can fly us. If it’s shorter than a certain distance, we’ll bus. I honestly love bus days because you can just put all of your food in a bag and take it on the bus, there’s a refrigerator and things like that. So you don’t have to plan for just buying food for the week or two weeks or whatever. You can transport it with you. But yeah, if it’s a long enough distance, then they fly us. When it’s the bus, they just get a regular coach bus that they charter for us and then we just ride the bus together, but we also do really fun things on bus days. We’ve started doing little Disney videos on TikTok. I find these Disney songs and we do little choreography and we put together a little video while we’re on the bus. 

GK

The tour website says you’re booked out through September 2026 with more dates to come. How do you take time off? 

HB

The way that our contract works is we get one paid vacation week every 6 months. Basically 2 weeks a year. There are rules about how you can request that. They try to keep it where only one person is out at a time, just for the purposes of what they call coverage, just to make sure that we have enough humans to do the show while someone is out. You know, if they gave like three different female-presenting people vacations at the same time, it would put a lot more stress on the show. So they try to space them out and you apply in advance. Beyond that, we can request personal days where you can go to a wedding or go see family or things like that. So we are allowed some time off here and there, but otherwise it is eight shows a week every week. 

GK

With eight shows a week every week, how do you take care of your voice?

HB

Everybody has their own ways that they’ve adapted to keeping themselves healthy. Like our dancers in the show make sure that they warm up before every show. We travel with someone who gives us physical therapy, things like that that keep our bodies intact. A lot of people will warm up before the show locally in their hotel rooms. I have a little break before I come on stage. I don’t come on stage right at the top of the show, so I will usually warm up vocally in my dressing room before the show. We try to drink a lot of water, those kinds of things that are just regular maintenance things. We do have times when people get ill or need to be out of the show for various reasons. We do have sick days for that and that’s what our amazing understudies and swings are for, is that they really keep our show going when we can’t.

GK

As you’re traveling from place to place, you’re performing at different venues each time. Do you only perform at certain venues that meet specifications or does the set change depending on where you are? 

HB

No, we basically travel with the set. I mean, it comes apart, but once it’s put together, it’s the same every time. Our folks who planned the tour looked at the smallest house that we were going to be in and they set the specifications for that house. I think actually one of our smallest houses, the smallest backstage houses that we are going to be in, was last week when we were in Detroit, just because of the way that the theater itself is set up. We have the deck of the stage that comes with us, that our crew puts down in every city that we’re in. That is why it stays consistent for us because the deck is going to be the same no matter what. 

Now how much space we have beyond that deck changes from city to city. Sometimes the width of the deck will be the width of the theater. So there will be nothing beyond the wings that you are standing on, you know? And then in some cities, there is extra space in the wings that just exists, and there are other things there, or just open space. So that part changes, beyond our stage deck changes from city to city. 

For example, there’s all of the big objects: me and Mrs. Potts and Cogsworth have very big costumes. And while we can sit down, it helps to have a certain height of seat. So they travel with little stools for us. During the show, we have what we lovingly call the object lounge, which is a little area where they put down a carpet and there’s little stools so that we can sit down during the show if we have long breaks. For example, none of us are in “Gaston.” So we have this long dance number where we’re not doing anything, but it’s not quite enough time to go to the dressing room. So they set up our little stools for us to sit backstage. Now, depending on the city, where that is changes. Sometimes it’ll be further into the wings, sometimes it’ll be upstage of the whole deck. It just depends on what the city’s parameters are. So when we get to a new city, it’s reorienting yourself as to where everything is backstage. 

GK

How do you manage performing your role for an extended period of time without getting bored of it?

HB

I have a lot of comedic stuff and that feels different every night because while I don’t change what I’m doing, I am feeding off the energy of the audience; trying to feel what the energy is coming at me and then giving back. It’s not like I’m changing the lines or changing the intention of what I’m doing, but there is a little bit of give and take. If the audience is really raucous and they’re laughing at everything you have to give a little more pause before you say your next line. So that kind of stuff does change slightly every night and definitely keeps it interesting for me. Beyond that we have fun little rituals and stuff we do backstage. That just develops over time and they keep it really fun and interesting. When Cogsworth comes off from one exit there are two of our ensemble members that sing songs about stopping. That kind of thing, and they change them every day, and it’s something that they do every day. There’s a part where the Beast and Belle exit after (spoiler alert) he becomes a person, and there’s a whole group of people waiting to make their next entrance that are in the wing. And so they do little different themed dances every day. There’s stuff like that backstage that the audience never sees that keeps it really fun and interesting for us. 

GK

How did you get into Broadway? 

HB

I’m from Florida originally. I was homeschooled as a kid, and my mom was really concerned that my sister and I were not going to have enough friends or interactions with other kids, so she put it in dance class. That was like my first intro into things, and then from dance class it went to community theater. I was that kid who was dancing on a coffee table and making my parents watch me. So my mom was like, oh, we have to get her into theater. So it started as an outlet and then I actually started working professionally as a kid. I worked for Nickelodeon for years. I used to be on a Nickelodeon game show called Figure It Out. I did a bunch of other things over the years: commercials, TV shows, various stuff, up until about when I was in high school. And then I refocused on theater for a while. I went to college for musical theater. Then I moved to New York immediately after I graduated and I did a lot of regional stuff, and then within a year or two I went on my first big national tour. When I got back from that tour, I did my first Broadway show.

I’ve been working professionally in New York for many years now. I’ve been very lucky. Of course I work hard, but so do a lot of people. I’m very aware of how lucky I have been to be in a lot of the right places at a lot of the right times. It’s great. I love it so much. My husband and I are both performers. He’s actually also in a Disney show. He is in The Lion King on Broadway, he plays Mufasa, so he’s there doing that and I’m out here doing this and we FaceTime during the show a lot because after his character dies, (spoiler alert) he has a big break and I have a big break around my intermission time. We FaceTime each other in our ridiculous outfits and it’s really fun. It’s hard being away, but it’s nice that we have such technology now that we can still see each other and hang out. 

GK

Do you plan to stay in Broadway? 

HB

I’m a lifer. Over the years, I’ve definitely been like, man, I should really, you know, toy with the idea of doing anything else, but I just love this so much. We’re lucky in the respect that you can make a life out of this, there are people who perform well into their elder years. I really love it. I love live theater. I love film and TV as well, but there’s something really special about seeing something live in a theater, the energy that you get and the energy that’s given is its own unique special thing. 

GK

In our screen-dominated culture with so many shows and videos to watch, there’s something unique and special and rare about a live performance, especially if it’s an imaginative one. It’s cool to sit with a group of people and collectively imagine, and everything’s funnier when you’re laughing next to other people.

HB

That’s one of the things I love so much about this show in particular because, while it is a for everyone show—we have so many adults, people that saw the animated feature when they were kids, and they come and have a great time—but what’s great is that they bring their kids, nieces or nephews. And so we’re getting these younger generations of people that are coming and seeing the magic of live theater, which is this really special, unique, wonderful thing and hopefully creating our theater-goers of the future. I love, love, love that so frequently we have little girls that show up in their little Belle dresses, which is my favorite thing because you can see them when we come out for bows and things like that, we see them in the audience. There’s just little specks of yellow all over the theater. It is so cool to see these younger kids getting to experience actual magic because it’s in front of them, right? It’s in front of their eyeballs. It is not through a screen. There’s no CGI, there’s no AI stuff. This is actually happening, and it’s theater magic. It’s Disney magic, which is its own special unique thing when you get to see it in person. 

GK

Thank you for speaking with us! 

HB

Thank you! I will say I’m really excited to come back to Nashville. I haven’t been in a while and it’s really a great city. I know that there are a lot of us that are really excited about coming back: food and culture and music and more. People are really excited to come back to Nashville. 

Disney’s Beauty and the Beast will be in Nashville at TPAC November 4-16. For tickets and more information, visit TPAC’s website, and for more information about the North American Tour, click here. 

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Grace Krenz

A Nashville native and MTSU graduate, Grace Krenz is a reader, a writer, and an arts enthusiast. She lives in Nashville with her husband and two children.

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